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Overdue Book

Anonymous Patron writes "Evening News 24 In The UK Some books are too good to put down or get back to the library on time, it seems. Libraries say the best-sellers are the ones most often overdue. Bookworms in Norfolk are getting so engrossed in library copies of JK Rowling and Jacqueline Wilson books, they are forgetting to return them on time. JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the book that was most frequently overdue in the county's libraries between July 2005 and July 2006. Readers kept 21 copies of the boy wizard tale beyond their due date."

The Daily Yomiuri - Osaka,Japan - reports Libraries in Kanagawa Prefecture are trying to deal with the problem of having large numbers of their books and other materials stolen, defaced or deliberately damaged by inconsiderate readers.

In Yokohama, 24,147 books were stolen from 18 municipal libraries in fiscal 2005, accounting for nearly 1 percent of the 3.59 million books owned by the libraries.

According to the Yokohama municipal government, the damage in terms of the books' purchase prices amounted to 28.71 million yen. A similar number of books have gone missing annually over the past several years, city officials said.

From The AP: Librarian Barbara McCutcheon is so fed up with overdue books, she wants the violators arrested.

Believe it or not, the police chief agreed.

"If Barbara has books out that are not returned, then we will make reports and begin to seek arrest warrants. We will start arresting people for prosecution after the 15th," said Mike Bankston, chief of the Police Department in Bonham, a city of about 10,000 people 70 miles northeast of Dallas.

Someone At MSNBC Discovered Unique Management Services of Jeffersonville, Mo., a collection agency that serves 750 public library systems across the United States and Canada. Unique tries to persuade patrons to return overdue items and pay their late fees.
Joanne King, spokeswoman for the Queens Library in New York City, one of the nation's largest public libraries with 840,000 card holders, said her library chose Unique because of its "soft-glove" approach.

If you're two weeks late in returning a book to the Baltimore County library, you're likely to get a phone call. If your book is four weeks overdue, you'll receive a notice in the mail.

And if you're Philip Akbar Shabazz, you're sent a letter that begins: "You currently have 402 items overdue from the Baltimore County Public Library. Fees and charges for these items amount to over $8,400."
Library officials say they suspect that the books were sold. Yesterday, Shabazz, a Randallstown resident, went to court to face a felony theft charge. He was convicted and sentenced to three years behind bars.

Seems like we haven't had an overdue story in ages... The Wait Is Over: A public library book issued in 1945 has racked up an overdue fees bill for $6,114 _ but the book's borrower has had the fine waived.

"The Punch Library of Humour," borrowed from Rotorua Public Library 61 years ago, was recently found among family belongings in a house attic in the central North Island tourist city.

A building inspector recognized the significance of the book and, using the list of strict borrowing rules pasted to the front cover, calculated what was owed in overdue fines.

"There are certain words in life that should avoid the adjective overdue: milk, baby and library books.
While chunky two percent is hard to swallow, it's plenty palatable compared to the bitter realization that "Fun and Fancy Free" is three days overdue. After all, besmirching your upright library patron status is neither fun or fancy free."

Anonymous Patron writes " Philly.com provides us a lesson in fine policy when it found that a year-old policy of doubling fees drove revenues down - and patrons away. "Library director Elliot Shelkrot said yesterday that revenues under the policy actually declined.
"Fewer books were coming back, and people were not paying fines, saying, 'I'm out of here,' but more importantly, we saw evidence that fewer people were borrowing books.""